Colorado - Kansas

Monday we headed to Camp Amache, another Japanese-American internment camp.  It was once again, quiet and peaceful at that location, unlike how it must have been during WWII. 

We then drove to Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.  This site is closely related to Bent's Old Fort (which we visited last week) in that 600+ soldiers from that fort rode over and attacked and killed over 200+ Cheyenne and Arapaho that were wintering in peace in the valley there.

It was another peaceful and beautiful location. See the trees? That is where the tribes were camped. At first, they thought the troops arriving were bison coming their direction.  Mostly women and children were killed.

There were plenty of warnings on the trail from the visitor center to the memorial warning about rattlesnakes.  I managed to scare a garter snake off the trail and it scared me too because I didn't see it until it moved! Luckily, it was NOT a rattlesnake.

We drove into Kansas after this. This was the best picture we got of the state line sign.

We got the screenshot for Kansas, it's Dorothy!

We were greeted by this lovely sunset our very first night in Kansas.  The sunsets in Kansas did not disappoint!

On Tuesday, our first real stop in Kansas was to visit the Chalk Pyramids also known as Monument Rocks.  

They are pretty impressive!

 Then we visited Nicodemus National Historic Site.  I knew nothing about this site, we got there at closing due to road construction and a detour but they were awesome and stayed open for us.  Nicodemus was a town that was settled by African-Americans after Reconstruction and was one of the first settled and is the last still in existence.  The other interesting fact was that the site is staffed entirely by descendants of the original settlers.

As we were driving around Kansas, I noticed that there was more than one tiny town that had a Utah road of some kind or another.

Wednesday we went to Fort Larned.  The really cool thing about Fort Larned is that although it was one of many Civil War era forts, like Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City, it was the site of the formation of the 10th U.S. Cavalry, otherwise known as the Buffalo Soldiers.

All the buildings were original and restored with furnishings, although not ALL the buildings that originally existed were there now.

We headed to the Cosmosphere next--they had all kinds of original space-related artifacts, including the original Apollo XIII command module, and one of the few remaining lunar modules.  The lighting was really dark in there, so the pictures aren't great.

Thursday we went to Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve.  If it hadn't been a rainy, foggy, drizzly day, it would have been fun to hike and explore!

There are some historic buildings there, Spring Hill Ranch, that we were able to tour. If you go for a hike, there is one trail that goes through a pasture that normally has bison in it and there are plenty of signs to say steer clear of the bison!  Beautiful area.

Our last stop of the day was the Madonna of the Trail in Council Grove.  This makes the 4th of 12 that we have found so far.

Friday our very first stop was the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum.

Outside the visitor center were parking spots for veterans and Purple Heart awardees.  

Our first stop was the home. It is the original home, on the original site.  The red brick around it marked where the street was.  So many original artifacts in this home, it was interesting to tour.

The museum itself was under renovation, so there was a temporary exhibit in the library. The cool thing about the exhibit was that it had a simultaneous timeline running through it that showed events in Eisenhower's life, events in his wife's life, and world events and how they matched up or coincided.

I learned something really interesting: Eisenhower was given full control over ALL the Allied forces in Europe during WWII because he was THAT good and THAT trusted by all the other Allies.

Between the museum and the library was this statue.

 We stopped to see the National Orphan Train Complex

It's a small museum, not too expensive to go into.  The exhibits were interesting and we learned that the orphan trains were started because of the massive immigration + overcrowding in cities and poverty and that the whole thing was the start of the foster care system as we know it today.

Also in the same town is a POW camp.  It is the only camp of the hundreds that were spread through 47 states (there is one in Salina, Utah) that still has the original buildings on the original site.

Our next stop was kind of disappointing.  We stopped at the Pony Express Barn Museum.  What we didn't realize was that the only Pony Express about the entire thing was the building.  There was a mochila (Pony Express mail pouch) on display inside.  But really, it was a Pony Express barn that was a museum for ALL the things, not really anything related to the Pony Express.

I did like these license plates on the wall inside, Kansas shaped even!

It cost money to go in the museum, so if you ever happen to be in the area (Marysville, Kansas), just see it from the outside!

Saturday we toured the Topeka capitol building.  It was REALLY ornate inside, especially the Senate chambers!

We walked into the Supreme Court--this was the room where Brown v. Board of Education all started, ending up at the U.S. Supreme Court

In the rotunda were 4 statues of notable Kansans, including one of Amelia Earhart

When you walk in the basement, you can see the rough hewn stone and there are many exhibits and photos about the construction of the building

 We headed next to Brown V. Board of Education National Historic Site.  I don't know what I was expecting, but it was the actual school building, Monroe Elementary, that was the center of the case!

As we were walking in, so were many NAACP members heading to their monthly meeting upstairs.

So many thought-provoking exhibits, short films, and even a furnished kindergarten classroom

Today we attended the Atchison Branch, when I looked it up on the LDS meetinghouse finder in LDS Tools app, this is what I saw for the building. When I zoomed in to look at it, it was something like a Kansas workforce services building.  When we got there for church, it had the usual LDS Church plaque on the outside and I learned that it became a branch in 2015.  It was a larger branch than the one we attended in Sundance, Wyoming, still tiny though.

We went to the Amelia Earhart birthplace museum after church and lunch.  This house was owned by her grandparents, she was born here and lived here from ages 3-12.  

There were lots of artifacts, articles, photos, and other research about Amelia Earhart. There were also many period pieces of furniture, a few original pieces to the house and the rooms were furnished according to what they were like when Amelia lived there, including her bedroom upstairs.

My favorite was the dining room with this gorgeous window

Upstairs they had clothing used in the movie Amelia.  

There was also this beautiful stained glass bit above the two Gothic doors to the balcony. J said, "Hey, those doors look like the window at the American Gothic house!"

 We then headed to Missouri for the next few days.